Touch of Class

by Doug Hoagland

Ahmed Salem
uses his cane to cross the school campus

From the Editor:
The following article was published in the May 7, 2001, edition of the Fresno
Bee and is reprinted with permission. Stories like this one are a heartening
reminder that lots of blind youngsters instinctively embrace the NFB's philosophy
of blindness and recognize the importance of personal independence to real
success. Here it is:

The blind boy runs
his index finger along the internal organs of the earthworm. Its slimy skin
has been cut lengthwise and pinned back by another student. "Is it dead?"
the fourteen‑year‑old asks.

"Oh, he's a goner,"
says the aide who helps the boy in his algebra and biology classes at Clovis
West High School.

Ahmed Salem is the
boy's name. He is a Muslim and says Allah gave him his blindness as a test,
which he intends to pass. So last Monday he feels his way through the dissection.
Ahmed does well. He has memorized the worm's anatomy and identifies the organs;
average size: two millimeters. "I'm not going to be ignorant," Ahmed
says with a gravity more weighty than his years warrant.

His story is that
of the hard‑working immigrant, the type of narrative well known in a
valley where so many people have come from someplace else. Ahmed moved here
from Kuwait last summer. He developed cancer of both retinas as a baby and
lost his sight from treatment to save his life. He is one of two blind students
on a Clovis West campus of 3,000. He is the only blind student who spent this
school year perfecting his English, excelling in regular classes, and learning
to get around with a white cane he took up only last August.

Ahmed's school for
the blind in the Middle East had thirty students in one building. He didn't
use a cane there. At Clovis West it's so different. Ahmed moves from class
to class in different buildings, a distinct though not awkward figure among
teen‑age throngs dressed in long cargo shorts and capris.

Ahmed does not indulge
in the American tendency to look at personal issues and ask, "Why?"

"I've reached
beyond the age of puberty," he says. "I'm supposed to be a man. `Why?'
would be a stupid question because that would be a rejection of my life."

Ahmed, an Egyptian
by birth, lived in Kuwait with his parents and four sisters. He says his father,
a doctor, moved his family to the United States because of superior schools:
"Here it is better education. Maybe we will go back. Maybe we will live
here forever."

He attends regular
classes with sighted students and got straight A's his first semester. He's
doing well again; his lowest grade is a B in English, which he considers just.

"I don't like
anyone giving me more than I deserve," he says. "The problem isn't
the teacher. The problem isn't the subject. I need to work harder."

Nevertheless, he often
takes a novel and reads it three times in Braille to understand it fully in
English. Ahmed's first language is Arabic. He is one of 287 visually impaired
students in the central San Joaquin Valley attending public schools, according
to December, 2000, figures from the California Department of Education. The
practice is called mainstreaming‑‑students with disabilities going
to class with nondisabled students. The practice became popular in the 1970's
but dates to the late 1940's for blind students.

Peggy Chong, spokeswoman
for the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, says mainstreaming fits
with the philosophy: "Blind people are part of society, so they should
be in society." But public schools pose risks for blind students, Chong
says. The risks include:

* Blind students
becoming isolated. They need to hear from people who are blind and have
succeeded in nontraditional fields. "We celebrate Black History
Month and Cinco de Mayo to help those minorities remember their past and see
their future," Chong says. "My people don't have that kind of support."

Ahmed dreams of being
a nuclear physicist‑‑a choice that excites Chong.

"Good for him,"
she says. "That's an attainable goal."

* Blind students
getting too much praise. Chong says sighted people can gush over a blind
child who is bright or independent: "You don't want your head full of
that. You can get tired of people thinking you're so amazing because you crossed
the street or turned your homework in on time."

Chong, blind since
birth, says praise builds "a false sense of reality" that government
and school programs foster: "The blind people who actually get somewhere
depend on themselves, not the system."

Amanda Lueck says,
however, that blind students should be praised for their accomplishments. Lueck
teaches at San Francisco State University and is recognized for training teachers
to work with the visually impaired.

* Blind students
not learning to read Braille. Chong says only an estimated 7% to 11% of
blind students who graduate from high school are literate in Braille. Some
educators challenge the accuracy of that figure; they say it's too low.

He's an intense young
man. But he also knows how to use the easy banter of youth.

"Hey, man,"
an acquaintance will say as Ahmed moves across campus. "What's up?"
he replies, rear‑ending the words to sound urban and contemporary. Ahmed
is tall, standing 5 feet 11 3/4 inches, and speaking proudly of that fraction.

Ahmed starts his day
at Clovis West by spending an hour with teacher Susan Dickerson, who works
for the Fresno County Office of Education's Vision Program. She marvels at
his determination: "I think he's driven in his soul to succeed."
Dickerson teaches Ahmed new Braille skills, helps translate his schoolwork
into Braille, and assists him with new technology so he can become more independent.

Laurie Hoke, an orientation
and mobility specialist for the county office, also works with Ahmed. "Prince
Ahmed," she calls him; they practice crossing busy streets several times
a week.

Dickerson says her
job is like that of any teacher: helping students discover their natural gifts
and develop them. Ahmed already possesses a flair for expressing himself, even
in his second language. He wrote a poem this year that read in part:

I wonder when the world
will end

I hear the talking
of the ants

I see the whole world
in front of me

Ahmed creates his
prose, takes class notes, and writes essays on a Braille Lite, a small seven‑key
machine the width of a video case. Combinations of keys produce the raised
dots of the Braille alphabet. Text is stored on a microchip and can be printed.
A display pad allows Ahmed to read any portion of the text in Braille, and
a voice function repeats the displayed text, allowing him to quickly edit his
work.

Clovis Unified School
District paid $3,600 for the Braille Lite and $800 for a software program that
reads aloud the screen of Ahmed's laptop computer. He's using it to learn about
the Internet. In Kuwait he didn't have most of the technology he uses at Clovis
West.

In this increasingly
wired world Ahmed continues to rely on the computer he was born with--his brain.
During algebra class he often figures out answers before other students finish
writing the problem.

"If I want to
be a nuclear physicist, I have to be very fast," he says. "I love
math my whole life."

Algebra teacher Jason
Berg says some students try to race Ahmed in solving problems. He usually wins.

Ahmed praises Berg‑‑and
all of his teachers. He says English teacher Brickey "shows a lot of mercy
when she speaks, but she's also fair." About geography teacher Jim Hurley,
Ahmed says: "I didn't like the subject, but I love the teacher so much
that he made me love geography." Does this fourteen‑year‑old
who already understands the value of appreciating his teachers ever "kick
back"‑‑as teen‑agers say‑‑and just be fourteen?
Amro Suboh, one of Ahmed's buddies at Clovis West, says a group of friends
go on picnics and also study at the mosque. A few informally wrestle, Ahmed
included.

Fifteen‑year‑old
Amro, born in Jordan and reared in the United States, says other students are
sometimes "a little too nice" to Ahmed because he's blind. His friends
try to treat him normally, Amro says.

Ahmed says he wants
it that way. It's part of being a regular person. Regular people know how to
get around campus and how to cross the street and how to talk with others.

Regular people also
are independent, Ahmed says, pausing to search for another way to express that
idea. He grows silent, and finally finds the right words. Ahmed smiles and
seems pleased.